My family loves Halloween. It’s our favorite holiday of the year – we get to decorate the house, wear costumes, go to parties ... and eat candy.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of candy.

In a society of bulging waistlines and bad eating habits in general, I really wish we could go just a little easier on the candy at Halloween.

I mean, what’s wrong with giving out only one small morsel to each trick-or-treater that comes by, instead of big handfuls? What’s wrong with running out at a reasonable hour and saying “sorry, we don’t have any more” instead of buying so much that you’re stuck with pounds of leftovers? What’s wrong with giving out something healthy, instead of candy, or a “trick” like some families used to do when I was a kid? (the idea used to be that you’d give out a trick … OR a treat.)

Sure, it’s just one day a year – but we have more candy sitting on our counter than I’d normally let my kids eat in an entire year. Seriously. Maybe two years.

I tried to be reasonable. I tried to get a small amount of candy, and supplement our offerings with little bags of pretzels. But my own family rebelled. They turned on me. They ridiculed me More...

Newsflash: The cost of healthcare in America has been out of control for many years and we really need to do something about it!

Ok, so this isn’t news. And we already have the all-new healthcare reform legislation which fixes all our problems, right?

Unfortunately, this new law – officially called the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (PPACA) but more affectionately referred to as “Obamacare” – has some problems, and now a few people are lobbying to ditch this plan so they can come up with something different.

Part of the problem with baking up a new healthcare plan is that there are so many fingers in the pie, all with vested interests – you have the healthcare insurance companies, malpractice insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital owners, nurses unions, lobbyists, medical licensing boards, government agencies (FDA, HHS, CDC, VA, CMS, etc), the politicians (who love to shoot down whatever their opponents propose, no matter what it is) ... and let’s not forget the doctors and the patients themselves. It really is fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE to implement any reform that won’t upset someone in the chain. It’s a political nightmare, and everyone knows it – but something has to be done. More...

Our container with all our belongings arrived two weeks ago, and we're almost finished unpacking. It’s nice to finally be getting settled in to our house. Last night, we got started on the last big part of the process that needs to be tackled: The Books.

I've never really considered myself to be an avid reader, to me it's just a part of life. It's like saying you're an avid breather. Yes, I like breathing and I manage to do it on a regular basis, even with everything else going on in my life. That's how I've always felt about reading books.

But as I'm unpacking my library, I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the boxes and by trying to decide where to put all the books. And this is after doing a massive weeding out of my collection when we left Bellevue five years ago – I probably got rid of more than two thirds of my books at that time, only keeping the ones I really like or have specific sentimental value, or ones I might want to read again or refer to in the future.

I just did quick count of the books I unpacked last night, and I've read about 300 of them. So how many books have read in total? Let's assume I've read two books a month since I was 10. That would be 37 (years) times 12 (months in a year) times two (books per month), equals 888 books. I'm not really sure if this estimate is high or low. And if it’s about right, More...

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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions. If you are a conservative, a liberal, or involved in any religion then you will probably find them offensive in some way.
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